


The Woman In The Purple Coat

by ready_to_kick_some_ass



Series: First Meetings [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Addiction, First Meetings, Homeless Sherlock, Homelessness, Mentions of Violence, Pre-Canon, Pre-Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Pre-Series, mentions of domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 16:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10194077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ready_to_kick_some_ass/pseuds/ready_to_kick_some_ass
Summary: "The old woman comes every day at the same time and throws a handful of coins into his open violin case."





	

The old woman comes every day at the same time and throws a handful of coins into his open violin case.

Then she gives him a wide, honest smile and listens to him play. With her head slightly crooked and her eyes closed. Devoutly.

She isn’t happy. He can see it. In the way she walks. Slightly bent down, as if she were carrying a heavy load. Powerless.  
But she is there every day. Every day at the same time. And somehow, Sherlock gets used to her. Waits for her. Looks for her reddish hair and her purple coat in the crowd.  
  
When the winter comes and his fingers tremble and burn in the freezing cold, she brings him a thermos full of hot tea and some homemade biscuits.  
This is the first time she talks to him.

“It’s way too cold to stand out on the street, young man,” she says, frowning as she fills the cap of the thermo with tea and passes it to him.  
  
“Thank you, Miss,” Sherlock says hoarsely, and the warmth of the tea is almost a shock after the hours of rattling cold. “I’m fine.”  
  
She raises her eyebrows doubtfully, and lets her gaze wander over his figure.  
He knows what she sees. The shadows on his pale face, the bloodshot eyes. The worn out jacket, which is too big for him. The shoes, which have more holes in them than the Swiss cheese in the window of the French Delicacies shop behind him.  
He lowers his eyes and drinks the tea. He doesn’t want to see her pity.  
  
“Where do you go when you’re done playing?” She suddenly asks gently. “Do you have a place to sleep?”  
  
Sherlock hesitates with the answer. In the last few days he has had a very well sheltered place under a bridge. It’s not warm, nowhere is warm, but it is dry, and there are not as many rats as in his last shelter. He sleeps with his head on his violin case, full of fear that it could be stolen. His only source of income. All that remained to him. He could not bear to lose it.  
“I’ll get along,” he says indeterminately to the woman, taking the biscuit she is offering him. “Thank you.”  
  
She looks at him firmly and he has the unpleasant feeling that she could look right through him. As if she was looking beyond the wall, he had meticulously and painstakingly around himself. He avoids her gaze.  
  
“You look like him,” she suddenly says in a strangely stifled tone.  
  
He looks up, frightened, and sees that her friendly eyes are full of tears. He swallows. The situation makes him nervous. He wants to run away. Escape. But he is frozen in place.  
The woman shakes her head and then she turns around, walking away quickly, a hand firmly pressed to her mouth.  
Sherlock looks after her, the biscuit still in his hand, and does not quite know what to think of it.  
  
So he eats the biscuit mechanically, it tastes of lemon and vanilla. Then he takes up his violin again.  
  
Sherlock plays and plays until the darkness comes and takes away the colors of the world.

  
*

  
When the woman comes the next day and watches him play, her eyes are red and a bruise is decorating her right cheek.  
He stumbles in his playing at the sight.  
  
She stops before him, and gives him a timid smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes.  
  
Sherlock plays the song to its end and doesn’t take his eyes from the conspicuous mark on her face. It registers all color nuances. The spotted red at the edges. The light blue in the middle, traversed by violet shimmers.  
His fingers tighten around the bow as he feels the first touch of involuntary rage rising in him.  
_What bastard beats such a friendly, attentive woman?_ He asks himself grimly and bewildered.  
Despite the winter cold, he gets boiling hot.  
And yet he has no idea why he feels this way …

When he’s done, he drops the violin and watches her rummaging in her pocket for her purse.  
The thoughts are racing through his head.  
He should not ask her about it … it should not bother him … he can not help her. He can not even help himself. It’s not his problem. It is _not_ his problem.  
And yet he asks the question.  
He just doesn’t know exactly why.  
  
“Who did that?”

Her head goes up. Her eyes widen in surprise.  
Her mouth opens and closes again.  
She obviously didn’t expect the question.  
“Who did that?” He asks again, and this time the woman involuntarily touches the bruise on her cheek gently with her fingertips.  
  
“Oh, that … I’ve stumbled against something while I was cleaning the flat,” she says half-heartedly, and Sherlock doesn’t believe her. “I am very clumsy, you know,” she continues.  
  
He snorts.  
“A friend of my mother said the same for a long time. Until her lover broke her arm and beat her bloody,” he says dryly, and she shakes her head hastily.  
  
“It’s not like that,” she mutters. Then she finds her purse and rummages through it. She hastily throws all the coins she has into his case, and then she goes away without another word.  
Slightly bent down, as always. As if she wants to make herself smaller than she really is …  
  
Sherlock frowns.

  
*

  
When the woman comes the next day, he doesn’t play.  
  
He sits on the ground and holds his right arm. It’s broken. Certainly.  
  
Blood drips from his nose to his lip, slowly and steadily.  
  
He stares at his violin case with empty eyes. The case is useless now.  
Because the violin is gone. And without a violin, there is no money in the case.  
It’s the first time Sherlock seriously thinks about the golden shot.  
  
He would have enough cocaine left for it.  
Simply dissolving into the atmosphere would now be a relief.  
Simply disappear …  
  
People hurry past him and their shadows fall on his huddled figure.  
At some point it begins to rain.  
Sherlock hardly feels the slight drops. He also barely feels the pain in his arm. There seems to be no place in his body that doesn’t hurt. And so everything has become a muffled fog.  
Suddenly, a shadow doesn’t pass, but remains standing in front of him.  
And talks.  
  
“Oh, no, my dear boy, what happened?”  
  
She kneels in front of him and lifts his chin, and he looks into worried, bright eyes.  
It’s the woman who listens to him every day.  
The woman with the bruise on her face.  
She takes a handkerchief from somewhere and holds it to his bleeding nose. He lets her do it. He is too stunned to do anything.  
“What happened?” She asks again.  
  
_Yes, what happened?_  
  
Blurred shadows in his head … people. Screaming. Aggressive. There were…  
“Too many,” he muttered dizzyly. The blow he had gotten to his head was probably harder than he had initially assumed. “They have … my violin … Going to sell it somewhere probably.”  
A sharp pain strikes him at these words …  
  
Loss.  
His violin … The last thing that had reminded him of better times.  
He lost it.  
It is gone.  
All has gone so fast.  
  
He can feel tears in his eyes. He blinks them away.  
  
“Oh no,” the woman murmurs in front of him, still resolutely holding the handkerchief to his nose. “No, no, no … these terrible people.”  
Her gaze falls on his shapeless right arm. She breathes sharply through her nose.  
“The arm must be treated,” she says to herself, shaking her head. The handkerchief is soaked with blood.  
The rain gets stronger. The people walk faster, throwing only glances of astonishment at the two figures on the ground.  
The woman looks up at the gray sky, then at Sherlock, and shakes her head.  
“You can’t stay here. You’ll catch your death.”  
  
Sherlock laughs bitterly.  
"Catch my death …” he gasps. “That would be preferable, yes.”  
  
“Don’t be silly, my boy,” she says sternly, taking the handkerchief away. “Life doesn’t only consist of bright moments. There are always some rain clouds. But they will drift away again. Sometime. And now come with me. We must get you out of this rain and to a doctor. I know someone who can help us without making too much trouble …”  
  
He’s too weak to protest in any way.  
Too dazed and exhausted to get rid of her as she pulls him to a stand at his healthy arm.  
He stumbles up and follows her through the rain keeping his head down.

  
“Martha Hudson, by the way,” she says to him at some point.  
“Sherlock,” he murmurs dizzyly. “Sherlock Holmes.”

  
*

  
In the next few days, Sherlock learns a lot about Mrs. Hudson.  
  
He learns about her son, who looked a lot like him. Who died in a car crash a long time ago.  
  
He learns about her abusive husband, who isn’t in London most of the time. He finds out a lot about this husband. Things, that eventually results in the husband’s arrest and execution in the US. After that, Mrs. Hudson never walks bent down again.   
  
He learns about her own problems with drugs in the past.  
  
He moves into the empty flat in her building.  
  
Sometimes, he still plays the violin for her.  
Sometimes, they sit together and talk about the good and bad sides of life.  
Sometimes, they play music on the old radio in her flat and dance to it. She giggles and he smiles.  
  
They become family.

 

The violinist and the woman in the purple coat.

**Author's Note:**

> Corrected by [bakerstreet-irregular](http://bakerstreet-irregular.tumblr.com/).  
> Visit me on [Tumblr](http://currently-in-my-mind-palace.tumblr.com/) for more! :)


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